History of the Russian Church. 1700–1917

Introduction

A. The General Influence of the Development of the Russian State in the XVIII–XX Centuries on the Russian Church

a) In the eighteenth century, a new period in the history of the Russian Church began, which, in accordance with the name of the supreme governing body of the Church, the Most Holy Governing Synod, is called the synodal period.

At the founding of the Holy Synod, the introduction of the collegial principle and the abolition of the principle of one-man command in the supreme church administration were of decisive importance for Peter the Great (1689-1725). Until then, it was this last principle that underlay the authority of the Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia. In reality, a new period in the history of the Russian Church begins with the death of the last Patriarch Adrian (1690-1700) on October 15, 1700, when Peter I handed over the supreme ecclesiastical administration to his protégé, Metropolitan Stefan Yavorsky, as locum tenens of the patriarchal throne. A transitional stage began in the organization of church administration, which in its essence fully refers to the synodal period, which lasted until November 21, 1917, that is, until the restoration of the patriarchate in Russia.

Throughout the synodal period, this so-called "church reform" of Peter was constantly subjected to both tacit and open criticism from the church hierarchy, the clergy, scholars, publicists, and Russian society as a whole. In fact, the state power was the only instance that not only relied on Peter's reform as a legal basis, but also evaluated it as a positive phenomenon in all respects. For this reason, the government in the synodal period did not make any concessions to public criticism and from time to time tried to suppress it by means of repression.

Critics of the church reform of Peter I (see Volume 2), with a few exceptions, were inclined to explain all the shortcomings in the life of the Russian Church, including the inadequacy of church administration, which manifested itself in many important areas, and the state churchliness introduced by Peter directly, and exclusively. Such a judgment is too cumulative to be historically justified. No matter how fair this point of view may be on this or that particular occasion, it completely overlooks the other side of the problem—those important factors that influenced the policy of the state itself in relation to the Church and determined the development of the state churchhood during the synodal period. The church reform of Peter I was an integral part of his transformation of the entire state, which, being completed as a whole, could not but influence both the church policy of the state and the Church itself. Over the two centuries of its history, Peter's Russia underwent profound changes in state, social and cultural life, which could not but affect the internal life of the Russian Church. Under the influence of Peter the Great's reforms and their consequences, the religious, social and cultural conditions of life of the Russian people changed radically. As a result of these changes, the episcopate and clergy in their concern for the pastoral care of the people entrusted to them encountered many difficulties, which the Church in the former Muscovite Rus' was completely unaware of. All this made one of the primary tasks a complete reform of the usual techniques and methods of pastoral work. The solution of this task placed extremely high demands on the hierarchs, parish clergy and their supreme leadership, the Holy Synod, both in organizational and spiritual terms.

Our account of the development of the Church during the Synodal period should show how heavy was the burden of all these new difficulties for the Church, and that Peter's reform of the supreme body of church administration was an important, but by no means the only factor that influenced the life of the Church. The Church is part of the common life of the people. Consequently, it is necessary first of all to outline those main features of the internal history of Russia in the Synodal period that had an impact on the life of the Church, choosing as a starting point the situation on the eve of the reforms of Peter I. Of course, it is absolutely inadmissible to idealize church life at the end of the seventeenth century, as was often done, for example, by the Russian Slavophiles and other critics of the synodal period.

The time of the Russian Patriarchate (1589-1700) does not, properly speaking, constitute a separate period in the history of the Russian Church: its difference from the preceding time, when the Russian Church was under the rule of metropolitans, is of a purely formal nature [1]. When the Russian Church became autocephalous and the place of the metropolitan (who from 1446 was no longer appointed by the Patriarch of Constantinople, but was elected by the Russian bishops) was taken by the patriarch, this by no means led to any expansion of the power of the head of the Church. The entire structure of church administration remained unchanged, from the top to the lower bodies. The only innovation was the increase in the number of orders under the patriarchal cathedra, which, however, had almost nothing to do with the general church administration [2], but were mainly the result of rich land grants from the tsars in the seventeenth century, especially under Patriarch Philaret (1619-1633). This led to a significant expansion of the former metropolitan region, now called the Patriarchal region. It consisted of extensive land holdings, representing a significant part of the common church property. And during the administration of the patriarchal throne by the locum tenens, as well as after the establishment of the Holy Synod, the ecclesiastical administrative apparatus also revealed great inertia. Many of the old departments existed under different names for a long time after 1721. Peter I overestimated the importance of the collegial system in the matter of higher administration, thinking that by creating a collegially working Holy Synod, he had found the best means to combat the shortcomings in the life of the Church. As in all areas of state administration, Peter began the church reform from above, and later he no longer had time for a systematic transformation of the entire organization as a whole and for the improvements necessary from his point of view. Separate measures in this area were carried out in connection with other reforms of state and people's life.

One of the main shortcomings of church life in the pre-synodal period was the lack of education of the parish clergy, whose training occupied too little of the church hierarchy, from the patriarch to the diocesan bishops. There were not enough schools with general education and special church programs. This reflected the attitude of Muscovite Rus to the matter of education in general. Secular education was fearful, as it could become a source of heresies, and the role of theological instruction was also underestimated. Due to the liturgical nature of Russian Orthodoxy, it emphasized the cult side and ritual, pushing into the background the role of reason in the perception of dogmas. The establishment of schools began in the middle of the 17th century, but proceeded very sluggishly, and only by the end of the century did the church authorities begin to take part in it [3]. At first, the shortage of qualified teachers was especially acute. Throughout the XVIII century, the distrustful attitude to education remained generally unresolved. Therefore, it is not at all an exaggeration to say that the underdevelopment of school affairs was the fatal legacy that the Church of the Synodal period received from the past.

Another negative phenomenon inherited from the past was the schism of the Old Believers, the external cause of which was again the liturgical nature of Old Russian Orthodoxy. The schism was a deep, painful wound on the body of the Russian Church, which never healed during the entire synodal period and greatly weakened the spiritual strength of the Church. The Church placed the struggle against schism at the head of all her missionary activity, wasting her forces almost fruitlessly and thereby losing sight of other important tasks of pastoral service. This situation was further complicated by the fact that the dispute between the Church and the schismatics in its own political forms (which manifested itself already in the seventeenth century) was interfered with by the state power, which very soon began to play a leading role here. As a result, the Church's missionary activity among the schismatics was discredited, and the Church's authority was undermined. The stubborn resistance of the schismatics contributed to the formation of sects and their wide spread. The unsuccessful struggle against sectarianism hindered pastoral work in Orthodox communities; the latter, left without proper guidance from the Church, fell victim to the dangerous consequences of Peter's reforms, which were expressed in the secularization of the people's life as a whole.

b) Along with these internal factors, which cannot be ignored when considering the consequences of Peter's church reform, there are external factors, which, having arisen independently of the internal life of the Church, nevertheless had a strong impact on it. The church life of any nation proceeds in close connection with transformations in the sphere of state and culture. In the history of Russia in the eighteenth and twentieth centuries, four major factors are found that posed extremely difficult tasks for the Church: 1) the territorial growth of the state; 2) population growth; 3) changes in the social structure and state of culture; 4) the new nature of state power and its position in relation to the Church [4].

The territorial growth of the state entailed the expansion of dioceses, the construction of new churches, as well as the numerical increase in the episcopate and clergy. Already in Muscovite Russia, and especially towards the end of the seventeenth century, in view of the growth of the state territory, the question arose of increasing the number of dioceses. In the imperial period, continuous territorial growth was as follows: